Allegiances
by Xem
Summary: Axel and Saix both have trouble adjusting to their new status as Nobodies. But who has it worse?
1. A Ghost

**_Allegiances_**

"It's you who's changed. Not me."  
>"No Axel. I embraced my fate. You chose to remain a child. Just look at you now, still just as you were."<br>A snarl, empty. "And you shall forever remain so, a pathetic projection of what once was. I am at peace with my lot as a ghost; a nothing."

* * *

><p>The Nobody lay his fronts aside as he stepped into the safety and momentary comfort of his room. The door quietly shut behind him, leaving a clutch of grasping Dusks behind it, their constricted and twitching fingers pining to come within. Eventually their scratchings ceased, and Saix allowed himself to lie back in his bunk, eyes gazing up at the ceiling in a sort of tired stupor. Bodiless forms swirled around his vision. Monsters reached out at him from the shadows, boogeymen crept all about, shadows loomed. As a child he could remember once being mortally terrified of the dark; screaming out for his mother whenever the hall-light was switched off, curled up like a tiny shaken animal in his sheets. Now he blinked it all away. He was Master to all fear, indifferent to the horrible nightmares that haunted him as a youth. His only burden was the celestial globe which called to him softly, with a voice like milk and cream.<p>

It glowered at him from his window, beckoning him to join it in its lofty perch in the sky.

"A ghost. A nothing," he reminded himself with a hoarse whisper. "Yes, for now."

* * *

><p>With the start of a new day came a new recruit to train. Xemnas was so full of surprises.<p>

He looked very young, with the sort of untainted porcelain face of a priceless doll. He spoke with a sharp, naiive and unpredictable tone which rang incessantly in Saix's ears. "Hey buddy," he said while the Senior Nobody was trying to explain the uniform policy to the greenhorn, "when do we get to the fun stuff? I'm tired of learning about the heart and darkness and the Nobodies, blah blah blah. Can't I go see the other worlds?"  
>A low growl let itself roam from Saix's throat, dying out quickly. "You will respect me, Number IX. That is not a suggestion." His patience was burning out.<p>

The newest member brushed the unkempt strands of hair from his face, a bit in surprise, mostly in apology. "Sorry, man. Sorry! I-I-I, ...oh man... I'll listen, I swear!"

"Good." Saix growled with a bit too much force than was necessary.

Over the next few months, the newest member Demyx had, not surprisingly, stopped showing up for his orientation lessons. Axel had supposedly taken him under his wing as an apprentice. 'Good riddance,' VII thought to himself. He hadn't seen Axel nor Demyx for days now. It was a welcome peace. With a familiar tiredness he reached up and traced the fresh scars adorning his face. "It is good to know I have trusts elsewhere."

* * *

><p>The journey to the Altar of Naught from the Soundless Prison was a long and arduous one. But something deep in Saix's legs compelled him to walk the distance, avoiding the easier maneuvers to his port-of-call. It relaxed his nerves, calmed the moonlight within him.<br>For most of the trek the halls were bleak and empty, grandious yet deserted in their pale glory. A Dusk or Creeper would slither by occasionally, whispering greetings and mismatched phrases recently learned to their Master.

He is Seven, watch as He dances.

Gravity, gravity, apples, Master.

Step lightly.

Please do not tread on me, Master.

Some spoke in strange foreign dialects learned in untraversed worlds, others were silent, awaiting orders or disintegration. He watched them scuttle over the walls and slide over the floors, like a colony of ants. Eyes glazed he bent over and plucked a Dusk from the floor, suspending its wriggling body by the throat.

Master, please let me down.  
>You are hurting me dear Master, please set me down.<p>

Saix constricted the creature, tightening his grip over the Dusk's throat. It began sputtering something, omitting strange gasping noises.  
>Straining, it managed to relay its message to him.<p>

My Dear Master, He lets me go free. Please free me Master.

"Saix."  
>The sudden voice broke the Nobody's concentration. He relaxed his grip on the struggling Dusk, still clutching it by the neck.<br>Axel stood before him, an unusual calmness in his wide emerald eyes. "Let it go."  
>"Axel," Saix said with faded surprise, "Leave me at peace."<br>"Let it go, Saix. What you're doing isn't right, it did nothing wrong."  
>Saix tossed the broken creature to the floor. The Dusk struggled to maneuver its limbs, but only succeeded in dragging itself slowly away.<br>Axel stepped towards his senior, his boots clicking on the marble floors. His eyes narrowed as he drew near. "Isa."  
>The name sent a smarting pain through Saix's arms, into his fists, which balled up tightly.<br>With persistence and without fear Axel came nearly nose to nose with him. "What did you do to your face."  
>Saix's lips curled, baring sharp canine teeth, letting a low hiss warn the other man that he had come too close. Axel stepped back, but insistantly glared at him.<br>"It is a pledge of allegiance, Axel, your type wouldn't understand honor."  
>"If you wouldn't mind telling me what you swear allegiance with?"<br>Saix sighed, eyes narrowed. "I owe you no explainations." He turned away and crept up on the shivering Dusk which still crawled futile on the floor. "A scar for my Superior. And a scar for my equalizer. A blood pact." His eyes drifted up to the moon which could be seen through the wide windows above.

An odd silence ensued throughout the room, only echoes of the writhing Dusk which was once again in Saix's grasp. "You've changed, Isa."  
>A sudden flood of power and molten blood charged through Saix's body, bubbling in him like a belching volcano. "Do not call me by that name. I am through pretending!" His fingers tensed, clawing at the space around him, yearning for flesh to tear. They found none. Axel slowly shook his head, narrowing his eyebrows. "You aren't Isa. Not even a ghost of the one I knew." A portal appeared and Axel stepped quickly away.<br>Saix felt a dull and slow pain begin to creep up his spine, an ache, another burden, something which couldn't be erased by the loss of a heart. "What a terrible sentence this is," he said to his prey, the Dusk, with an audible groan. "To be cursed as human. And yet I lack the very essence that which separates me from the beasts." Saix tightened his fist.

The Dusk hissed quietly with death.  
>Saix let its broken body fall to the floor.<p>

"He is right, I am not a ghost. I am a nothing. A ghost has at least a shadow. A ghost can remember."  
>He sighed to the dead Dusk, its squalid and twisted body writhing with a dying spasm. Saix looked calmly into the palm of his hand.<br>"A ghost can at least remember what it was like in life."


	2. The Memory, Brief

_It wasn't long until the two were an inseparable pair._

_A childhood magnetism and strange telekinesis drew them together on the strange and few nights when Isa's father did not come home. With curiosity they would tumble down to the river just beyond the clearing in the wood and poke at the fat toads who lay spread out on the cold stones of the riverbed, who, with arduous croaks, plopped into the tepid water. Isa settled comfortably into the soggy undergrowth along the stream, not minding the slow dampness creeping up his legs. Lea, adversely, seemed to be on quite disagreeable terms with water, and sat cramped on his haunches._

_"Ya know, Eyes," remarked Lea, using Isa's least favorite epithet, "This is really boring." Lea hopped over to examine a much more interesting rotting log, the surface of which was brimming with every sort of slimy creature imaginable._  
><em>Isa didn't look up. He ran his fingers across the side of a particularly corpulent bullfrog that sat croaking loudly on a rock. The amphibian blinked his orb-like eyes slowly before opening his mouth in a wide chuffing yawn. With certain indifference, Isa plucked him from the slick rock and placed the fat creature into the water.<em>

_"Hey, what's up, pal? Frogs getting tiring?" Lea said, crawling over to Isa's side, still suspending himself above the soggy ground, "You look a little… blue."_

_"It's nothing."_

_"You sure?" Lea asked, still doubtful._

_"Yeah," said Isa, still feeling despondent, "I just spaced out. Sorry."_

_Above them, a large barred owl looked about, wondering where his prey had gone._

* * *

><p>With a start, Saix awoke from an otherwise uneventful sleep. He let out a deep sigh, wiping away blanket of sweat from his brow. Blinking his luminous eyes, he searched his room for any Dusks that may have been responsible for his vision. It was typical for the mischievous creatures to whisper their report of the day in the ears of the sleeping Nobodies. Often Saix would awake with an inane story buzzing in his head, the result of some desperate Dusk who hadn't had the chance to relay his report when the superior entity was still awake.<p>

Nothing.

"Strange," he whispered to himself. If it wasn't a Dusk, what could it have been? A dream would have been impossible; it was well-known that Nobodies were incapable of dreaming. If not a dream, then what?

Saix sat back in his bunk, letting his eyes adjust to the dimming light filtering into the room. Not a dream, not a Dusk's report.

A memory.


End file.
